SUBJECT: MNHQ here: How has maths helped your career?

[AnnaCMumsnet]

Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and maths careers. The ratio of men vs women working in STEM has stalled at 74:26

There are lots of possible explanations for this, but the stats seem to show that disparities start fairly early. Girls are substantially less likely to take scientific, numerical and technical subjects at A Level, and an study from a few years ago showed that across OECD countries, girls are more likely than boys to express a lack of self-confidence when tackling maths and science problems - even though girls often outperform boys at GCSE level in these subjects.

We’ve been talking to Maths4Girls, who are trying to redress the balance. They say:

“We seek to dispel gender stereotypes and inspire more girls to pursue maths and the opportunities it can bring. We do this by introducing female role models to young girls aged 11 - 14 so they can share their inspirational career journey, and give insight into their amazing career.”

Some of the workshops Maths4Girls have run (for free) include using maths to solve crimes, to persuade people, and to save the world (by tackling the really big global challenges such as climate change).

We know from thousands of conversations on Mumsnet over the years that we have many brilliant women here who excel in maths and maths-related fields, so to support Maths4Girls in their mission we thought we’d try to find a few role models of our own.

How has maths helped your career? How do you use maths, from day to day, in your job - and what sort of difference does your job make in the world? Do you have any thoughts about what might have helped you when you were studying or breaking into your chosen field - or do you have any tips for the upcoming generations of girls and young women thinking about building a career in STEM?

(Feel free to namechange if your story is too identifying!)

Thanks
MNHQ

I took the humanities route & ended up in engagement & marketing roles. Did maths at school to Higher but never loved it. Had no clue how much I'd use maths in budgeting, analytics and forecasting on a daily basis. Really don't think it's role in everyday working life is highlighted enough when taught in school.

I am accountant and for many years worked with Physicists and Engineers, I am strongly promoting that side but it will ultimately be up to her how she goes forward.

Maths is a great subject and does not tie you down to any particular career. It does open the door to many interesting ones however.

I have a PhD in Physics and also a qualified Chartered Accountant. I now work in venture capital and invest in spin-outs from one of the UK’s top Universities. Maths has been vital for all these roles. My current role is awesome, I get to meet some of the brightest minds, hear about their inventions and the work with them to build the idea into a business. I then sit on the board of many of these companies and I genuinely believe they can all have a huge positive impact on the world (plastic alternatives, next-generation batteries for electric vehicles, quantum computers). So I really feel that I have an opportunity to make an impact and that genuinely wouldn’t have been possible without maths.

It’s very clear from the direction we are heading technologically that there will be huge opportunities for those who go into STEM subjects. The advances that are being made are simply incredible - I’m fairly sure that in 100 years, the way we work, travel, get medical treatment will be unrecognisable and those working in STEM subjects today will help deliver this.

It’s not for all, but STEM subjects are definitely for many more than perhaps people think.

I hated maths at school! I got a B at GCSE and didn't even think of taking it at A-level. After working for several years I took an MSc that included a lot of maths and it was incredibly hard but also rewarding. I finally loved applied maths. I then went on to do a data science PhD and a 'maths mind' helps learn coding. I have a SPLD which was unrecognised until late in life, which I think put me off maths as it was incredibly hard for me. These days I wish I could go back and do it at A-level.

Enormously. For me, it was the leveller. I was good at it and in some instances that helped, especially when in a male dominated room, be in at university or later in my career. Obviously it was not the pure maths but the ability and applied skill and confidence that came with it.

I have always loved maths and it has really helped with the tests when applying for jobs! Knowing that I’ll pass the maths parts without a problem is one less thing to worry about!

I have an honours degree in maths, and work in finance. I need complex maths to understand prices for contracts, but I also need basic statistics and lots of simple maths for calculating anything to do with investment returns, the interest rates we use etc. you wouldn’t have a pension if people weren’t good at maths!

@SingleModeFibre that sounds amazing!

I’m a scientist, I work in cancer research. I use maths every day. I use it to work out concentrations of solutions and reagents (molarity, dilution series, DNA concentrations etc), to work out ratios for experiments (how many cells etc), to analyse my data (does it show a trend, is it statistically significant), to work out how many experiments I need to do to look for an effect (power calculations). Although I fall into the biological sciences, maths and chemistry are both used everyday.

I work in economic consulting and am a chartered accountant. I advise multinational companies like Google, BP, Vodafone etc how to price all their internal transactions. Maths, law, and data analytics skills are vital along with being a clear communicator and being able to turn complex financial models into plain English. Its interesting, well paid work.

Future jobs will all heavily depend on data analysis and visualisation. This could be anything from working out the most efficient delivery route for your online retail business (complex mathematical model required) to tracking carbon emissions of the flights you charter for your boutique travel agency (more complex mathematical models required). The business world basically runs on databases and spreadsheets so any aspiring entrepreneurs need to be comfortable with maths.

I’m a scientist for a big pharma company. I work in large drug molecule manufacturing and have a PhD in chemistry. I use maths all the time; calculating experimental parameters, designing studies, manipulating data, statistical analyses and modelling (Monte Carlo simulations) being some examples.

Although I do remember at school (late 90s) that our maths teacher said that boys were naturally superior at maths! What a crock of absolute shite!

I should also say that I love my work, it’s taken me all over the world and I’m now a long-term expat in Switzerland. It’s also important; we are literally making new, life-saving and life-enhancing drugs. And it is very well paid too boot.

I'm in a leadership role and I'm also a charity trustee. I've noticed that many people around me - both men and women - are lacking in confidence with regard to numerical work like budgets, data, statistics, forecasting etc. I'm sure that my ability to engage with the detail on this kind of stuff, and to ask searching questions about it, has helped me to progress to a senior level. I'm not afraid of the numbers, whereas many people are.

I'm a lawyer. I use maths to work out bills... seriously I also use it to calculate compensation for clients/challenge opponents' calculations - pension calculations can be tricky! Working out interest as well. When I'm negotiating an exit deal there's lots of it too.

And now in a leadership role I am responsible for a budget, big team of staff, pitching for more staff I need to be able to understand the department's figures to challenge assumptions made by others about our productivity etc.

Also I have a lovely friend who is a landscape architect and she uses trigonometry at work - I was so impressed when i discovered that!

I have a maths and computer science degree. It opened a lot of doors for me. I've worked as an actuarial assistant, a computer programmer and analyst, an IT manager, and a police officer. I haven't used anything directly taught at degree level in decades, but the comfort with figures, the ability to model something so you can predict the impact of changes, the ease with logic and analysis and the experience with estimation have been useful in every job I've ever had.

I recently took a second degree in social studies and the maths training all ready provided the base for the analytical skills needed for that.

Also, it's not just how useful it is for business, I love maths. It's beautiful. It's conceptually challenging and it feels incredible when you grasp something and everything falls into place.

My love of maths has helped in many ways. From the obvious to undoing ridiculous formulae on excel which are clearly incorrect. It's like giving a calculator to an ape

Slightly different perspective here: I'm a software engineer working in the payments space, and being bad with maths hasn't held me back. I scraped a pass at GCSE. The most complex thing I have to do on a regular basis is percentages. Anything more difficult than that I get someone to double check my logic.

I was told that you had to be good at maths to have a career in software engineering, and I can happily say that's simply not true. It probably would help though 😉

I'm a humanities graduate but my discipline uses a lot of statistical data, and I use those skills constantly in my professional life. Without going into too much detail, I work in research and development for a department that provides a service to vulnerable people. Part of my job is to monitor who is using the service and how they are using it so I can report back and recommend improvements to the service, ways to reach people who aren't using it, and also analyse the success of measures to encourage engagement. Having a grounding in a maths subject means I can analysis data and identify patterns, but also that I can present my findings in a logical, appropriate format - that last point is important because I'm sure we've seen instances of data being unintelligible because of the way it's presented.

These are incredibly useful skills to have! And they're useful even if you plan to work in a non-STEM field.

Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and maths careers. The ratio of men vs women working in STEM has stalled at 74:26

The thing that leaps out at me about this statement, is that it would be much more engaging for the target audience of people who aren’t comfortable with maths if “76:24” was expressed as “about 3:1” or “three times as many men as women”.

I have a degree and a masters in pure maths, but there are many people in my (very technical) area who have only a basic grasp of mathematics (secondary school standard), and it did not held them back in any way. I am doing maths for fun now, at researcher level.
So my advice to girls and young women is to do it only if you find genuinely drawn to it. For the absolute majority of careers even in STEM, you don't need maths beyond middle school level.

Hated maths. Only use to add up test scores

My DH taught physics when I was doing my o’levels and with his help I managed to pass maths. I hated the subject! Not quite the same, but years later I did a statistics module as part of my masters and loved it and it was very useful for my career!

I loved maths, did O and A level at a girl s grammar school where there was no such thing as male and female subjects, even in the 1980's. I also did physics A level. I went on to to do a BSc in a humanities subject, that involved a lot of maths - lab work and stats.

I ended up with a career in Town Planning. I used basic maths to calculate scales, areas, volumes, percentages etc. Occasionally even had to use a bit of trig! If I'd gone into the policy side of the career, there would have been a lot of statistics.

I love my job, and it is one with a high female up - despite the maths.